


Worst Of Me, Best Of You

by molly16



Category: Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:54:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23158864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/molly16/pseuds/molly16
Summary: “Does he know about Christopher?”“No. I don’t want Link to give me that look that everybody who knows about him gives me.”“You’re going to have to tell him.” When Amelia doesn’t say anything, Addison adds, “You know I’m right or you wouldn’t have called me.”When Amelia finds out she's pregnant, her first call is to Addison. Her second is to Link.Rated T for swearing, I'd rather be on the safe side with the rating.
Relationships: Addison Montgomery & Amelia Shepherd, Atticus Lincoln/Amelia Shepherd
Comments: 10
Kudos: 62





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I just really want everyone from Private Practice to show up again for Amelia, especially Addison, Jake and Charlotte, so I'm going to kind of make it happen.

“Fuck.” 

Three pregnancy tests. All showing two very bold lines. There’s no way there’s a false positive in there. Amelia Shepherd is most definitely pregnant. For the second time in her life, she feels the distinct panic of being entirely responsible for a growing human, and the first time was nothing short of a heartbreaking disaster.

“Addison, I’m pregnant. And I’m losing my mind.”

There’s a reason Amelia called her first, she’s always able to calm her down and talk her off the ledge, even if it means doing something she doesn’t want to. “Do you want to be pregnant?”

“Yeah, yeah. Link and I are good together, so far.” It takes her brain very little time to jump to the next possible catastrophe, “What if he doesn’t want kids? I mean, I think he does. But we never talked about it because we weren’t there, but now we are all of a sudden.”

“If you two are good together, it will be fine. Take that off of the list of things to worry about.” The phone goes quiet for a second, then, “Does he know about Christopher?”

Even though she had already thought about him, it still takes her breath away for a second to hear someone say his name. “No. I don’t want Link to give me that look that everybody who knows about him gives me.”

“You’re going to have to tell him.” When Amelia doesn’t say anything, Addison adds, “You know I’m right or you wouldn’t have called me.”

Amelia stares back down at the pregnancy tests, hoping that they’ll change results and she can tell Addison that it must have been a false positive, but they don’t change. “What if something’s wrong with this baby too? I cannot do that again, Addison. You saw what that did to me.” Her brain is spiraling faster than the words can come out of her mouth and tears start to spring up, running down her face.

“Do you want me to come up there or do you want to come down here?” Addison had a feeling that that’s why Amelia called her in the first place, but had to make sure. “I can clear my schedule, give a few patients to Jake. Plus, Henry would love to see his aunt.”

Everything comes right back up to the surface, after years of hiding it. Years of acting like she didn’t lose a child, like she didn’t hold a living human being in her arms, then watch her friends take him away from her to donate his organs. “Please, Addison. Please.”

There’s a knock on the bathroom door that Addison can clearly hear on the other side of the call, so she wraps it up quick, “The chances of what happened last time happening again are astronomically small. But you have to tell Link. He has no way to know why you’re acting like you are unless you tell him. I’ll be there as soon as I can clear everything.”

It takes a second for Amelia to make herself look like she wasn’t crying and to hide the pregnancy tests somewhere that no one will look, deciding on trashing two of them at the very bottom of the garbage can and sticking the last one down the back of her pants. When she opens the bathroom door, there’s no one standing there, prompting her to yell, “Whoever knocked, it’s yours!”

The second she gets back to her room, she pulls the test out and hides it in her purse, because while it’s a predictable spot, no one is going to search through her black hole of a purse for something that might not even be in there. She knows the next thing she has to do, and she knows that the sooner she does it, the better it’s going to be, but she overwhelmingly does not want to do it. After five minutes of typing and deleting, then typing and deleting, Link texts her, “Something you want to say?”

“Yeah, but it’s more of a face to face conversation. I’ll head over to your place, too many ears around here.” Then it hits her. Somebody could have heard her on the phone with Addison, especially since she knows someone was standing outside of the bathroom for long enough to realize that someone was in there. Managing to get out of the house without running into anybody is nothing but a small miracle, but on the drive over to Link’s, she keeps thinking about the thing in her purse. The thing that could change every single aspect of her life and it terrifies her. 

She knocks on the door, and the second Link opens it, she goes digging for the test. “What’s going on? Normally when I get dumped they don’t go digging through their purse.”

“No, god. No, I’m not dumping you.” Shit, what if it slipped out of her purse when she was leaving Meredith’s. Anyone could find it, know that one of the people who lives there is pregnant, and she’s the only one not acting normal. When her hand finally lands on it, she says, “This is something big. Life changingly big. And then I have to tell you something that I don’t tell most people.”

She pulls out the test and hands it to Link, not feeling the need to explain what it is. His eyes go big immediately, and he starts looking between her and the test, like he’s not believing what he’s seeing. “This is amazing, Amelia! We’re going to have a kid?” Tears fill her eyes quickly, and all she can do is nod her head. His arms wrap themselves around her, and she instantly relaxes, feeling her shoulders go down and her jaw unclench. 

It takes a minute of them celebrating the news before Amelia pushes away, “You have to know something, though. It’s something that only the people that were there know about, and I don’t want you to look at me differently.” She looks up at him, trying to read his expression, but failing.

“Everyone has something that they don’t tell people about. It won’t change us.” Link’s hands still rest on her lower back, keeping her close, trying to reassure her, “I promise, whatever you say will not change how I feel about you.”

Amelia pushes back further, releasing herself from Link’s arms, “This is something that we need to sit down for. It’s not a short story.”

It takes her far longer than normal to get comfortable on his couch, but normally she’s not telling him her biggest secret, normally she’s completely relaxed already. Her nerves are back, and if she wasn’t doing this face to face, she would have chickened out by now. But she can’t.

“First thing you need to know: I’ve been sober for years. I know better than to fall down that hole again, especially now. But, in Los Angeles, there were a few months where I would take anything: any painkiller, any party drug, basically anything that would get me high. Name an illegal drug, and I’ve probably done it.” She can tell that Link is trying to keep his face neutral, to not let her read what he’s thinking. 

Link takes the break, “Wow. I didn’t know it ever got that bad.” 

“That’s not the part that I need to tell you.” Amelia takes a breath, starts wringing her fingers, “I had a boyfriend, Ryan. He was the one that would get all of the illegal drugs, I’d write prescriptions. For the few months that we were together, it was basically drugs and sex constantly. From what I remember out of all of it, he seemed like a really good guy who just had this one little issue. I don’t remember what set it off, but we decided that we were going to do all of the drugs we had left, which was not a small amount, to have one last night of doing whatever we wanted, then we would get sober together.” Remembering the next part still hurts, but she pushes through it, “The next morning, I woke up, and he was dead. He overdosed the day before we were going to get clean.” 

“I can’t imagine that.”

“Yeah, you don’t want to.” Amelia pretends there’s something interesting outside the window, looking at anything but Link for the next part. “I went to rehab, and I thought withdrawals were just worse for me because I was coming down from so many things, but turns out I was pregnant.” One hand finds its way to her stomach, where Christopher’s sibling was growing at that very second, and it takes everything in her to hold back the sob that’s trying to escape, “My baby didn’t have a brain, just the brainstem.” She finally looks back at Link, who reaches over to her hands, stopping herself from picking at her nails. “I held him, though, Link. I held him, and he made this little squeaking noise, he couldn’t even cry,” 

She breaks remembering the 43 minutes that she held him, the 43 minutes that she was a mother for. Link pulls her against him, holding her tight as her torso shakes from how hard she’s crying. There’s nothing that he can say that can possibly make his right, that can make this hurt her any less. All he can do is be there and try to understand. 

She stays there, her ear up against Link’s chest, listening to his heartbeat and breathing for hours. She’s safe there, she can’t find out that her baby isn’t healthy, she can’t find out that her baby doesn’t have a body part. For right now, her baby is completely healthy and forming just like it should. “I named him Christopher and donated his organs. Addison told me they went to San Diego, Sacramento, Boston and Chicago. That’s the only good part about this, that four kids got to live because of him.” 

Link replies with a kiss to the top of her head, “I can see why you’d be scared. But you’re going to have to know eventually.”

“Addison’s flying in. She’s the only one I know won’t sugarcoat the truth, no matter how bad it is.” Amelia readjusts on his chest, the topic making her antsy, “Plus, she knows how to calm me down, especially when it comes to this.”

Link looks confused for a second, “Who’s Addison?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Addison's back!

“Wait, so Richard had a baby with Ellis, didn’t tell anyone and now she works here? And now Warren’s a firefighter? Wasn’t he a surgeon a year ago?” Amelia’s turned around in the passenger seat, attempting to fill Addison in on the big things that she missed. 

“No, Ellis never told Richard about the baby, so he didn’t even know until she showed up.” Link has to admit, hearing all of this, it is pretty confusing, but that doesn’t slow down Amelia, “And then there was a big fire at the hospital, and Ben decided to play hero, was pretty damn good at it, and decided to drop medicine and become a firefighter.” 

“Damn.”

Amelia turns to face forward for a few seconds, until she remembers another thing that happened, “Oh and you know about the custody trial between Arizona and Callie? So Arizona got custody, but then Sofia wasn’t happy and was trying to go back and forth between the two of them, which isn’t exactly easy, so Arizona ended up doing a fetal surgery fellowship, I ended up blinding the surgeon that was training her, and then she was offered a pretty nice job in New York, so she left.” 

“You blinded a surgeon?” Addison latches on to the craziest part of the summary, “How do you even do that?”

“The brain tumor would have definitely blinded her, I gave her a shot to not go blind.”

Link takes the second to speak up, “Seems like you two should have both sat in the back, Henry and I could have gotten our own conversation going up here.” Upon hearing his name, Henry makes a sound of agreement, clearly having tuned out the past thirty minute car ride, “Not trapped in between the gossipers.”

Amelia had always known that Link was good with kids, she had seen him when he was going around as Santa on the pediatric floor, she had seen him with Meredith’s kids, but now that they’re going to have a kid of their own, it feels different. It feels like she’s looking at her own future, which is equal parts terrifying and exhilarating. But instead of dealing with all of that right now, she turns around and catches one of Henry’s feet, “I got it! I caught a Henry!”

Through laughs, Henry protests, “Aunt ‘Melia, I need my foot!” 

“I don’t know. Hey Link, think he needs his foot?” 

“Nah, I can get him a new one.” Link watches Amelia’s face, and can see part of Addison’s face in the mirror, then adds, “But that foot looks pretty good. I don’t know if I could find a better one.”

Amelia lets go of Henry’s foot, “You’re lucky this time, kid. I’ll get you one day.”

Henry pulls his knees up to his chest, “No you won’t. I’m faster than you.”

As if on cue, Link pulls into Meredith’s driveway, letting Amelia accept the challenge, “I’ll race you to the door.” Raising her eyebrows at Addison, she adds, “Winner gets ice cream.”

Addison goes to protest, but Amelia’s succeeded in riling up the five year old, who just about jumps out of the car, and starts running instantly. Amelia opens the car door, then calls him back, “That was cheating and you know it. Get back over here.”

“It wasn’t cheating!” Henry yells back, “You took too long.”

Amelia pulls the one thing she knows will result in a rematch, “If you cheat, you don’t win. Looks like I get to have the ice cream.”

As predicted, Henry comes running back, “Okay. I’m still going to win.” Sure enough, he did win, partly because Amelia let him, but also because the kid runs really fast.

When they open the door, Henry looks up at Addison slightly unsure of whether he should follow the noise coming from the room to his left or stay where he is, so Addison takes his hand and leads him over towards his cousins that aren’t actually his cousins but have too complicated of a relationship to him to explain, leaving Amelia and Link alone in the entryway. 

“I think they both like you.” Amelia says, taking Link’s hand, “Normally she’s a lot tougher on my boyfriends, so don’t be surprised if she corners you later.” After Link laughs, she adds, “I’m serious. Remember when I said we’re like sisters? She’s the overprotective older sister.”

Link doesn’t lose his cocky smile, “Maybe it’s because I knocked you up. She doesn’t want to rough me up too much.”

“I will say, you talking with Henry like you did probably helped your case,” Amelia closes the gap between the two of them, “I knew you were good with kids, but seeing that felt different. Gave me a little idea of how you’re going to be with our kid.”

Addison walks out of the other room, minus Henry, “Alright, I’m ready when you two are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so Henry should be a year younger than Zola, but I didn't happen to look that up until too late into writing this. Now he's in between Bailey and Ellis age wise.
> 
> Also, apparently it's Derek Bailey and not Bailey Derek like I thought it was? I found out a lot of things while fact checking my writing during this chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Literally just the tiniest bit of cuteness. It's super short, but it's fine because I already have part of the next chapter written.

“Your baby looks completely healthy, Amelia.” For the first time during the ultrasound, Addison is able to catch Amelia’s gaze, which had previously been locked on the computer screen, “I don’t see anything wrong with this baby. This ultrasound looks perfect.”

Every part of Amelia relaxes just a little: her jaw unclenches, she releases the sheet that had been balled up in her hand, her shoulders drop. “You’re sure?” She feels Link squeeze her hand a little, trying to convince her that everything’s fine, that their kid is okay.

“I’m sure.” Moving the transducer a bit, Addison asks, “Do you want to hear your baby’s heartbeat?”

Part of Amelia’s brain is telling her to run from this, to leave Seattle and go somewhere where she doesn’t know anyone, start over. It feels like history is repeating itself, even though Link is here with her and holding her hand, and most definitely not dead. But another part, a more convincing part, of her brain is telling her to stay. Stay in Seattle, stay in this relationship, stay with these people that care so much about her and will undoubtedly care for and love this baby. That part of her brain gets her to nod, to look over at the man she has beside her, whose smile is almost too much for her heart to handle.

And then Addison turns on the sound. A fast, steady, loud, strong sound fills the room and knocks all of the doubts she had about this baby being okay out of her brain. This is not history repeating itself, this is something entirely new, and the overwhelming relief of the worst-case scenario not happening causes tears to start rolling down her cheeks. Within a minute, Amelia’s in control of the ultrasound, in control of hearing her baby’s heartbeat, seeing the tiny human inside of her, and it all clicks. “We really accidentally made a baby.”

“Yeah, we did.” Link’s smile softens in the way that’s reserved just for when he’s looking at her, “Even after trying to avoid it, we made a baby.”

More tears start to prick at the corners of her eyes, hearing the voice of the man she has rapidly fallen in love with mixed with the sound of their baby’s heartbeat, something she never thought she would get to--or want to--experience. Once she stops fighting it, the crying starts instantly, and without a thought, Link has her wrapped up in his arms, “It’s okay, you’re okay.” He repeats this, kissing the top of her head, trying anything to comfort her.

A muffled, “I know,” rises up from Link’s chest, “We’re okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are so few amelink fics on here, I'm kind of surprised. I guess if I want more fics, I'll just have to write them myself.
> 
> Also, shout out to everyone writing peraltiago fics right now. A few of the ones I read really got my brain thinking about things I could add into this fic.


End file.
